NHL: The Stretch Drive (March/April 2010)

NHL Center Ice is the best $160 I spend each year.

I don’t really have that money to spend (or the time to watch!), unfortunately. And between the CBC, RDS, TSN and NBC I can catch a hockey game on most nights of the week if I want to, and TSN (is it Wed or Thurs, I can never remember) has a double header, as well as HNIC on Saturdays. So I can manage to catch a couple of Western games, just not as often.

One thing I am wondering though is whether there’s a place online (through NHL.com?) where I’ll be able to catch a playoff game or two in April? I’ll be in the UK (Brighton) from the 14-20th and I really don’t want to miss the Habs games! Last year RDS had the Zone de Match, but they aren’t doing it this year. I’m willing to pay, but I’d rather pay per game. I think through RDS it was about 3.50$ CDN.

CBC has live streaming of the games they broadcast on their hockey website.

I also find one can catch a fair amount of games in general on justin.tv if you go on “loo loo man” or “mcmanix hockey” channels. I don’t have links but I just type in “NHL” on the Live TV search and any game that’s got like 500+ viewers is usually a good one.

CBC’s live streaming is only available in Canada.

Cammalleri and Bergeron are both back tomorrow night!

This makes me happy! I love Cammalleri, and Bergeron should be able to help on the power play (though he’s a little weak in other areas of the game…).

And Moen might only miss a game or two, which is good news considering how bad that cut could have been! Seems there’s no damage to his eye. Any idea how big a cut 50 stitches might be?

Only in Canada? Pity.

Wow. Over 25 minutes in power play time in the Ottawa/Philly game, including a full 2 minute 5-on-3 for the Flyers and a 7 minute power play for the Senators, and 0 power play goals.

The Sharks finally looked good on the ice and broke out of their division-lead-losing free fall, but it was all done on purpose so we didn’t have to play Detroit in the first round.

How many could he have scored if he hadn’t played the bulk of his prime years in the era of legal hooking and holding?

I would guess he would have Gordie in his sights right about now. Not only did he play in the clutch-and-grab era, he played on some pretty crappy Anaheim teams in his first stint there.

God damn it.

The Habs are up 2-0 with about 2 minutes left in the third, in Buffalo, and somehow managed to only get one point out of it. Sabres score once on a powerplay and one more with the goalie out, before winning in a shootout.

Price oughta sue for non-support.

Only the Habs can lose a game in 5 minutes. And I agree - Price would have every reason to be pissed at his team; he stood on his head and they let him down. Again. I so wanted him to come back with a shutout, but still…stopping 41 shots in regulation is a pretty good performance.

Cue Halak for tomorrow night’s game.

It was like the last five minutes of the Canada-U.S. gold medal game at the Olympics, except the Habs couldn’t do anything in their end, much less just chip the puck out.

I see that Buffalo outshot them 17-8 in the third period, after the Habs already had a 2-0 lead. Now I don’t know if Buffalo is a particularly great team, but I do know they have lots of speed and offensive potential, and if you give a team like that enough chances to do something offensively, well, they’re gonna take advantage of it.

Oh well, can’t win 'em all, I guess. At least AK46 broke his schneid, with both goals for us tonight.

Wings are 8-1-1 in the last ten and really haven’t made much ground, damn the top and middle of the western conference are tough right now. 12 points from top to bottom of the playoff teams.

I’ve got a stats question I feel guilty not knowing. Does the guy in the penalty box get a minus if the other team scores on the resulting power play?

Any power play goal has no pluses or minus recorded for anybody. A short handed goal is recorded, but the man in the box doesn’t get a +. So there are more - then plus
That combined with the fact an empty net goal gives 6 minus and 5 plus means the overall league has a small net minus

Travis Moen. Damn he’s one lucky SOB.

Habs win 4-1, but don’t let that fool you… two of those goals were empty netters! It briefly looked like a repeat of last night when the Panthers scored with 3 minutes to go, but Plekanec and Gionta sealed the game.

Spacek checked David Booth in a legal hit (seems to be the media consensus, and both team coaches agreed - Booth had his head down, and the hit was from the front), but Booth went down and looked really out of it. He was brought to a hospital for overnight observation. After the severe concussion from earlier this year, I wonder if this poor kid’s career is over? It’s really an unfortunate situation.

What I find puzzling are his mediocre numbers with San Jose.